[BabyPeanut]

link Heat isn't all in your head: Warm nights made July the hottest on ...
Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, FL - 19 hours ago ... out 21,611 megawatt hours of electricity, far out-distancing the 2004 peak usage of 20,545 megawatt hours, set July 14. "It's our all-time record," said FPL ...

link
WPS Sets New Electricity Record
WBAY, WI - 16 minutes ago ... o'clock. It surpassed the previous record by seven megawatts. One megawatt is enough electricity for 350 typical customers. WPS ...

link
During the last two months, Duquesne Light customers have used electricity
at a record pace. Average hourly load and load used for June and July have
exceeded previous records set during the same period in 2002.

link
Net income was the highest in Noble Energy's history, and discretionary
cash flow was the company's highest since Noble Energy began reporting the
number in 1999.

link Operating at full blastMilwaukee Journal Sentinel, WI - 20 hours ago
Port Washington - We Energies' new $335 million natural gas-fired power plant has been running non-stop this week as hot weather causes demand for power to soar while utilities are forced to conserve coal. ... The hot weather has air conditioners cranking across the state. Madison-based Wisconsin Power & Light Co. hit an all-time record on Tuesday, with more than 2,800 megawatts of electricity demand, spokesman Scott Smith said.

link Recent Heat Wave Set Power-Use Records Aug 2, 2005 10:45 am US/Eastern
(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK) The recent heat wave resulted in a number of power-use records for Con Edison.

The utility says July set a new high for monthly electricity used by customers -- of 6-million-395-thousand-843 megawatt hours, surpassing a record set in 2002.

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http://www.thepilot.com/news/072905electtricity.html
Electricity Usage Sets Record

For the second sweltering day in a row, Progress Energy Carolinas customers set a record for peak electricity usage Wednesday.

In fact, customer electricity usage July 27 set an all-time 24-hour record.

Between 4 and 5 p.m. Wednesday, Progress Energy’s 1.4 million customers in the Carolinas used an estimated 12,572 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity, eclipsing the record set Tuesday afternoon (12,232 MWh). For the full day, customers used a total of 250,671 MWh, which surpassed the 24-hour record set Jan. 19 of this year (245,977 MWh).

Before Tuesday, the previous summer peak-demand record was 11,977 MWh, set in July 2002. The previous all-time record was 12,004 MWh, set Jan. 24, 2005.

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and so it goes

[duke3522]

The grid is being pushed pretty hard. I have to wonder if the system can take the load. I can cut my gas consumption, but losing power would be a real pain.

Duke

[BabyPeanut]

I wonder how long this can last too. Seems there have been warnings for quite a while now like this oldie from 2001:
http://www.gulland.ca/depletion/fleay.htm

and this from 2004:
http://www.energybulletin.net/1773.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..While crude oil, gasoline and natural gas prices swelled in recent years, coal remained the darling of power companies -- the go-to workhorse of utilities nationwide, particularly those in South Carolina. It's not quite as clean and it's not quite as efficient as other fuels, but coal has been relatively cheap and dependable. Until now, at least...About half of U.S. electricity is generated by burning coal. Almost every major utility in the nation will pay substantially more to produce power this year and next. South Carolina Electric & Gas also gets about half its electricity from the black chunks of sedimentary rock, but companies like Santee Cooper, which generates 77 percent of its power by burning coal, will be squeezed the most.

Santee Cooper expects its total fuel costs to jump by 23.2 percent this year and it is forecasting another sizable increase for next year. The utility is trimming all the fat that it can, but most of that extra cost will be passed along to the 1.8 million South Carolinians and scads of huge industrial plants that use Santee Cooper power.

[BabyPeanut]

ah the master news story:

http://www.wvec.com/sharedcontent/APSto ... 5SI00.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')ower grid reports largest-ever peak load

08/01/2005

By ERIK SCHELZIG / Associated Press

A big power grid in the sweltering eastern U.S. announced it set another world record Tuesday afternoon by supplying a peak electrical load of about 135,000 megawatts.

PJM Interconnection LLC coordinates the movement of electricity among 13 states and serves about 51 million people, many of whom had their air conditioners on constant high.

"We had adequate generation available, and we didn't have to do anything particularly special, other than working very hard," PJM spokesman Ray Dotter said.

Tuesday's peak beat an earlier high of some 130,500 megawatts set last week. Before this year's scorching summer, the high for the same geographical region was about 130,300 megawatts in 2002, according to PJM.

The next largest regional transmission organizations serve France and the Tokyo region in Japan, but both have peak loads of fewer than 100,000 megawatts, Dotter said by telephone from PJM's Valley Forge, Pa., headquarters.

PJM operates in all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Also Tuesday, the utility that supplies power to New York City and its northern suburbs also had to pump out a record amount of electricity. The 12,551 megawatts consumed in the city and Westchester County broke a record set a week earlier, Consolidated Edison said.